This Incompetent Administration's Response to Coronavirus

[RickeyM]

White House embraces a declaration from scientists that opposes lockdowns and relies on ‘herd immunity.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10...-herd-immunity

I've been saying this for months. When you understand this you start to understand the response from this shit show of an administration from the top on down.

[Chicks]

Heather Cox Richardson
October 13, 2020 (Tuesday)

While the media is focused on the predetermined hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court seat formerly held by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the big story of the day is the resurgence of coronavirus.

The nation is back up to more than 50,000 new cases a day, the highest rate since early August, and numbers are continuing to rise. The states currently suffering worst are those in the northern Midwest-- Wisconsin, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota—but more than 30 states are reporting rising numbers. Wisconsin is so overwhelmed with cases it’s opening a field hospital this week, and it seems that Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma are right behind.

More children are being diagnosed with Covid-19, as well, making up more than 77,000 new infections.

The White House has abandoned the idea of controlling the virus and instead is openly embracing the idea of “herd immunity.” Officials are arguing that the nation should protect our most vulnerable neighbors—the elderly and the infirm—and the rest of us should go about our lives normally, without waiting for a vaccine.

While the White House has been saying this for months, it now has a group of scientists advancing the plan in a document called The Great Barrington Declaration. This idea is being pushed by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, and scientists whose work has been dismissed by most epidemiologists. It offers no data or scientific argument; it is a political opinion.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called the plan “unethical” because it “means allowing unnecessary infections, suffering and death.” He explains that the concept of herd immunity is one used for vaccines, achieved “by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.” “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic,” he said. “It is scientifically and ethically problematic.”

The idea of simply letting the infection spread is not popular among Americans, especially among the seniors Trump needs to win Florida. In 2016, seniors preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton by 49% to 44%. Now they are turning to Biden rather than Trump by 54% to 43%. Weirdly, Trump took to Twitter today to post a tweet apparently making fun of Biden by picturing him as a resident of a senior home—not calculated to win over more older Americans.

This approach reinforces the idea the president is trying to push after his own bout with coronavirus: that the illness is not a big deal and that those who say it is are simply trying to hurt his chances of reelection. At the Barrett hearings, Republican Mike Lee of Utah, recently diagnosed with coronavirus, refused to wear a mask. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also refused to wear one when talking with reporters, apparently concerned about being filmed in a mask when the official White House position was to downplay the virus.

Meanwhile, another official who attended the celebration for Barrett at the Rose Garden on September 26 has tested positive for the virus.

America leads the world in infections and deaths. Globally, at least 38 million cases of Covid-19 have been recorded as of 6:30 this evening. More than a million people have died. America has had at least 7,850,000 cases and more than 215,000 deaths.

As horrific as those numbers are, an article published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association says they are far too low. Dr. Steven Woolf, the author of the study, says that “for every two Americans that we know of who are dying of Covid-19, another American is dying.” Woolf looked at what are called “excess deaths” from March through July, that is, the increase over the average number of deaths expected in those months. He found 225,530 excess deaths. Sixty-seven percent of those deaths are linked directly to Covid-19, but the remaining 33% are unexplained, suggesting this unusual spike is related to the pandemic.

Erika Edwards of NBC News highlighted this study today, along with another in the same issue of the JAMA that compares U.S. death rates to those of other wealthy countries. The U.S. ranked poorly. According to the article, our Covid-19 mortality rate is 60.3 per 100,000 people. Canada’s rate is 24.6 per 100,000, and Australia’s was 3.3 deaths per 100,000. If we had had the same rate as Canada, we would have lost 117,000 fewer people, and 188,000 Americans would have been saved if we had the same death rate as Australia.

The good news is that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said today that vaccine development is “on a really good track.” Two vaccines have been put on hold as a volunteer in each trial has gotten sick, but Fauci says this is not at all unusual. He says he hopes that by November or December we should know if we have a safe and effective vaccine. If so, it will be distributed first to those who need it most, but will gradually become available to the rest of us.

Once again, Dr. Fauci reminded us to wear masks, maintain physical distance from others, avoid crowds, stay outside when possible, and wash hands. “Those simple things, as simple as they sound, can certainly turn around the spikes that we see and can prevent new spikes from occurring,” Fauci told Shepard Smith on CNBC Monday night. “We know that because our experience has proven to us that that is the case. We just need to hunker down and do that.”
Comments

[RickeyM]

Let's do herd immunity like Sweden they say. It's working for them. In reality not so much.

As of mid-August, herd immunity was still “nowhere in sight,” according to a Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine study. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, herd immunity to an infectious disease has never been achieved without a vaccine.

Despite Agent Orange's hopes and wishes we will not have a vaccine before the election.

[RickeyM]

At this moment as I type this, playing over the PA system at tRump's Iowa super spreader event is the Phil Collins song "In The Air Tonight".
These people are fucking insane. tRump does not care how many Americans die as long as he gets reelected.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by RickeyM

Let's do herd immunity like Sweden they say. It's working for them. In reality not so much.

Despite Agent Orange's hopes and wishes we will not have a vaccine before the election.

Welcome to Medieval Times.

[donquixote99]

The Great Barrington Declaration is a sham and a travesty of a sham (as Woody Allen might say).

From The Hill:

The declaration has been signed by 445,902 concerned citizens, 9,510 medical and public health scientists and 25,049 medical practitioners, according to its website. But Sky News found last week that dozens of fake names had signed the document, including Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas.

The article goes on to suggest the medical community's actual support for the declaration may be overstated....

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...DmMimJJisb1niM

[bobabode]

'About 75,000 more Americans died from COVID-19 pandemic than reported in spring and summer, study finds' USA Today

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...hs/5935813002/

Estimates are predicting 400,000 deaths by the end of the year.

[Chicks]

Inside the Fall of the CDC
How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus.

https://www.propublica.org/article/i...all-of-the-cdc

As always, outstanding reporting from the non-profit ProPublica.

[Chicks]

Jeff Stein @JStein_WaPo

President Trump on Fox Business asserted three or four times today without evidence or explanation that China would pay for a coronavirus relief package of more than $1.8 trillion

8:10 AM · Oct 15, 2020·Twitter Web App

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ROFL. MEXICO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL! CHINA WILL PAY FOR THE COVID!

[donquixote99]

Sure, try the 'we'll soak the foreigners' promise again. Worked the first time....